The CBC’s docu-series Hello Goodbye – based on a Dutch format that captures emotional airport greetings and farewells – has been waiting in the departures lounge for the past six years.

Originally put into development by the CBC in 2009, the show didn’t fit the broadcaster’s programming strategy at the time, Jennifer Dettman, executive director, unscripted content, told Playback Daily.

“We have been looking at this show forever, because it has been an international success, but [in 2009] we looked at it and at that time it didn’t seem right for our schedule,” Dettman said.

When Sally Catto became the CBC’s general manager of programming in June 2014, Dettman raised the idea of exploring the format once more to Catto, who agreed the show was now a better fit for the pubcaster’s schedule.

Another stumbling block during the show’s initial development was finding a suitable host, a fact Dettman and her team emphasized to producers Andrea Gabourie and Simon Watts when the series was put back into development two years ago.

“That was the big focus of the development process: is there the right person that has that conversational alchemy to make people comfortable and open to sharing their personal stories?” explained Gabourie, who is executive producer on the series and president of Forte Entertainment.

Canadians tend to be fairly reserved, she noted, and getting them to share their stories with a stranger while camera crews circle was potentially problematic. The fear that the format might not translate well was real.

After auditioning three potential hosts, Toronto-based psychotherapist and Life Story Project (OWN Canada) co-creator and co-host Dale Curd emerged as the person with the most appropriate interviewing style. CBC was delighted with the preliminary tape they were sent with Curd as host and the series was finally greenlit in early 2015.

The structure of the show, set in Toronto Pearson International Airport’s arrivals and departure lounges, sees Curd speaking with people who are either greeting or bidding farewell to their loved ones. The original format, from Dutch prodco BlazHoffski, is a single-camera show, though a three-camera setup was employed to make the show more appropriate for North American audiences, explained showrunner Mitch Gabourie. The footage was also shot on long lens to give the interviewees as much of a sense of privacy as possible amidst the hustle and bustle of the busy airport.

The material for the 10 30-minute episodes was shot over 40 days between June and September of 2015, with around 250 greeting/farewell stories being committed to film during the production phase. During post-production the 250 stories were whittled down to 40, with producers selecting songs from independent Canadian artists to accompany each.

The show is aimed at a broad 18-to-49 year-old audience, with Dettman expecting the show to appeal to age groups either side of that demographic as well.

The door is also open for more seasons of the show, added Dettman, pointing to the fact that the original Dutch format has gone to 10 seasons. “We’ll look at it [once the season has finished], see how it performs, how it feels on the schedule, and think about if this is one we’d want to bring back for Canadian audiences. It’s certainly one we’d think about doing again,” she said.

Hello Goodbye is produced by Pivotal Media and Forte Entertainment in association with the CBC, with Pivotal’s Simon Watts serving as executive producer alongside Andrea Gabourie. The show premieres on CBC this Friday, Jan. 8 at 8:30 p.m.